Ranking

Before she died, my closest friend gave me two things.

A piece of skin she had cut from her own body, and her lover.

She asked me to use that skin to make a shadow puppet for the opera…

I think I understood what she meant. She was telling me: Ah Mei, I’m giving you a generous gift. You should return the favor-kill someone for me.

I am the dowry maid for the legitimate daughter of the Shen Manor.

Last night, I woke up in the Heir’s bed.

Now, the servants of the entire manor are pointing and whispering at me: “A lowly wench like this deserves to be beaten to death with clubs!”

Shen Yujiao sat regally at the head of the hall. “In that case, let’s just promote her to a Concubine.”

She watched with a smile as I knelt and kowtowed to thank her for her mercy.

Yet, I caught the scent of Hehuan Powder in the air.

That was the very incense I had blended with my own hands for her husband’s use.

I am the best cook in the capital. No one has ever said my food was bad.

That is, until my noble ex-fiancé-the one who broke off our engagement-ate a meal I prepared.

“This tastes awful. It’s a good thing I didn’t marry you.”

I calmly packed away the bowls and chopsticks. “It’s your Last Meal Before Execution. You’re still being picky?”

That’s right. I am a cook who specializes in delivering the Last Meal Before Execution to death row prisoners.

While recovering from an illness in Jiangnan, I had a brief, passionate affair with a scholar.

When it was time for me to return to the capital, I left him a hundred ounces of gold and a letter.

“My mother doesn’t approve of our marriage. It’s better if we part ways.” Two years later, he earned honors in the imperial examinations.

When we met again, his face was clouded with a dark, brooding intensity.

“Was the ‘mother’ you spoke of actually your mother-in-law?”

I was beaten and driven out of the Chancellor’s Mansion with clubs.

As I lay dying of illness in the pouring rain, a scholar picked me up and took me home.

He didn’t mind my filth, nor did he mind my stupidity.

He cared for me in silence, acting even more like a mute than I did.

Once my injuries had healed, I prepared to bid the scholar farewell.

He went out to buy supplies for my journey, but he did not return that night. When I finally found him, I discovered that someone had broken both his legs and left him on the street to die.

He saw me and looked dazed for a moment, his face tinged with regret.

“Zhizhi, why haven’t you left? You should have gone.”

I wanted to ask myself that too-why hadn’t I left? Perhaps it was the few scraps of conscience I had left that made me unable to walk away, unable to avoid the trouble.

I dragged him home and nursed him with care. Before long, he recovered.

Neither of us ever mentioned my departure again. Later, his name appeared on the golden roster.

He was named the Top Graduate during the palace examinations, and he was on the verge of achieving fame and fortune.

Yet, he knelt and pleaded with His Majesty to thoroughly reinvestigate the case of the deposed Crown Prince from years ago.

His Majesty was furious. He threw him into the Imperial Prison and ordered his exile to the frontier.

I had no money and couldn’t get into the Imperial Prison.

I could only wait at the city gates, hoping to run into him and ask what on earth had happened.

But I waited through several dawns and dusks, and he never came.

Later still, I entered the palace as a study companion for the Fifth Princess.

Only then did I learn that a scholar in the Imperial Prison that year had died to prove his resolve, smashing his head against the blood-stained walls of the cell. Naturally, there were no guards to escort a prisoner out through the city gates.

But the Song Duhe I knew was never a reckless man, and he certainly wasn’t one to choose death so easily.

I am the pampered little fake heiress who was driven out to the countryside.

To go from the young lady of Marquis Manor to a carpenter’s eldest daughter-there is simply no living like this!

In order to return to the noble circles of Capital City, I set my sights on the scholar next door.

Standing on a ladder, I waved my handkerchief coquettishly over the wall.

“Hey~ I heard you’re my fiancé?”

The man chopping firewood with his upper body bare slowly turned to look at me.

In an indifferent voice, he said, “I am Lin Jiaoyue’s fiancé.”

On the eve of His Majesty’s bestowal of marriage, I lay in the Crown Prince’s arms and murmured, “Your Highness dotes on me so much. When my sister marries into the household, she won’t be angry, will she? Everyone else envies Your Highness for receiving His Majesty’s favor and being allowed to hold the wedding in the palace, but all I feel is sorry for you. It must be exhausting.”

I thought I was just putting on a fragile, sweet little act for the Crown Prince.

I never expected him to be sincere with me.

On the day of our wedding, my wife stood on the roof of the building, clad in a pure white gown.

She wept as she asked me, “If I die, will the people who hurt me feel any remorse?”

“They won’t feel a thing,” I replied. “But I will kill them. I’ll make every single one of them follow you to the grave. If you still love me, if you can’t bear to see me become a murderer, then don’t jump. I’ll take care of you for the rest of my life.”

She wiped away her tears and forced a faint smile. “I’m sorry, but I can’t hold on anymore. Every single day I’m alive, I just want to die.”

I looked at her, a wave of desolate sorrow washing over me.

I loved her.

But if she jumped, I would understand.

After I died, my bones became the sword in his hand.

Little did he know that I rarely exercised while I was alive, and I’d developed osteoporosis at a young age.

The sword forged from my bones was sharp enough, but it lacked resilience.

The very first time he used me, someone lopped off his head.

I am an NPC in the game City of Desire.

By day, I sell fragrant, freshly baked bread; by night, I find my pleasure in butchering men.

On the night the bakery closed early, a heavy rain was falling.

A man walked in. Beneath his black raincoat was a naked body and a sharp knife.

I took a bite of my toast and bowed in welcome. Then, as his eyes filled with terror, I raised the chainsaw I had been hiding behind my back.

Bang! Ten minutes later, his head exploded inside the oven. As flesh and blood splattered everywhere, I beamed with joy.

“Welcome to City of Desire, Player. I hope you enjoy your game!”

My wife and I were a couple of influencers with over a million followers.

After she passed away, the account stopped updating.

Until one day, a stranger sent me a private message.

“I look a lot like her.

“I can be her double.”

I was scammed by a real estate agent into moving into a Columbarium. To my surprise, the place was already occupied by a handsome, young, and tsundere ghost. When I took a closer look, I was even more shocked-it turned out we were old acquaintances.

While sorting through my mother’s belongings, I found a crumpled notebook tucked under her pillow.

Four words were scrawled unevenly across the title page: “The Kill List.”

The first name on the list was the obstetrician who had delivered me.

The date noted beside it was the day I was born.

The second name was my father’s.

The date was the day he died in a mining accident.

The third name belonged to a stranger.

The date noted was yesterday.

The police told me that this person really did die yesterday, but my mother was buried over a month ago.

I’m the Sea Queen, and I’m all about living in the moment. (“Sea Queen” refers to a playful woman who has many boyfriends and enjoys a carefree lifestyle.)

Body and mind-I never shortchange myself.

One boyfriend isn’t enough; if one won’t do, I’ll make it two.

On a luxury cruise, I ran into true love again.

But even a Sea Queen can misjudge people. I realized I’d been scammed.

After seeing through the con, I thought I’d make it through the trip safe and sound.

I never expected a far bigger plot-one that would tear me to pieces.

Along the way, the killer gave me ten chances to save myself.

By the time I understood what was happening, there was only one left.

On the night of February 2, 2011, my daughter was lured to a park under the guise of a part-time job.

There, she was raped and her body was discarded. At least three people were involved in the assault, but the killers were never found.

On New Year’s Eve, 2026, I prepared a table full of poisoned food and looked at my daughter’s photograph. “It’s been fifteen years, and I still haven’t found the people who destroyed you.

I don’t want to spend another New Year without you. I’m coming down to join you now.”

As the poison began to take effect, I set down my chopsticks and leaned over the table, retching. Just then, my phone rang.

When I answered, a familiar voice came from the other end: “Dad, I’m at the park. Wait for me, I’ll be home soon.”

I was born a beggar.

Maybe some wealthy young lady had made a mistake, or maybe some brothel woman had simply had rotten luck.

Either way, I came into this world. I grew up begging for bowls of slop.

At my most wretched, I even fought mangy dogs for food.

Later, to stay alive, I sweet-talked a human trafficker into selling me into the palace.

On the day I entered the palace, I saw the red sun rising at the edge of the sky.

It looked just like the duck egg yolk that had once gone rolling and wobbling to my feet in the Drunken Fragrance Pavilion.

I smacked my lips and savored the memory for a moment, then turned and stepped onto that long, long palace road.

From a beggar hated by all, I became a palace maid within the towering imperial palace.

That year, I was nine.

The first time I killed someone, the blade was dull.

I was fourteen that year. It was winter, and the north wind whipped against my face with a stinging bite.

Three bandits had scaled the wall of my grandfather’s courtyard, intent on stealing the last half-sack of millet he had hidden in the cellar.

My grandfather was blind. Hearing the commotion, he called out my name: “Shen He, Shen He!” He was using my alias.

My real name is Shen Heyi, and I am a girl. But the bandits didn’t know that, and Grandfather pretended not to know either.

He just kept calling, his voice urgent and hoarse, sounding like an old crow being strangled by the neck.

I fished out that Bone-Cleaver from beneath the stove.

Its edge was curled and nicked, so dull it couldn’t even slice through sheepskin cleanly.

But a human neck is softer than sheepskin.

I didn’t think about that day again for a very long time-not until I met Xie Changgeng.

I was the founding Imperial Tutor of a dynasty.

I came here burdened with a mission from the System: to save a collapsing, chaotic realm.

In the end, all I earned was the hatred of countless people.

The young chief minister I had known since our youth became a stranger to me, standing against me at every turn.

The Guardian General I had personally promoted despised me for monopolizing power and ruling the court as a dictator.

And the Young Emperor, the boy I had raised with my own hands… He hated me most of all for tearing him away from the one he loved.

So they laid a trap for me and forced me to drink poisoned wine, driving me to take my own life.

Then, after my death… They summoned a shaman to call forth my memories.

They wanted to expose every evil deed I had ever committed to the world.

But later, after each of them had seen my memories… Every last one of them went mad.

A friend of mine was developing a residential complex for a real estate company in Xi’an when they discovered an ancient tomb. To avoid delaying construction, they chose to cover it up and report nothing. But none of them expected that someone would write a line on the wall of the work shed in red pen. Rules of the corpse-nurturing ground: 1. Do not feed the corpses raw meat. 2. If you see a child under the age of ten, close your eyes immediately. 3. Eat the rats.

My virginity was sold by my family to a seventy-year-old tycoon for the steep price of one million yuan.

The price was fair, all things considered. After all, I wasn’t just selling my virtue; I was selling my life.

On our wedding night, the old man squeezed my throat and asked, “Do you have any final wishes?”

To stay alive, I told him three stories.

And then, I made a prophecy.

“You will die within my third story.”

The first time I went to a nightclub after starting university, I ran into the neighbor who had disappeared a year ago.

He had his arms around two scantily-clad beauties, looking like a total delinquent.

When he saw me, his gaze flickered across my chest before he let out a soft, dismissive “tsk.” Later, he pinned me against a corner. His finger pressed against my lips as he leaned down, demanding I call his name. It was only then that it dawned on me. He wasn’t my Zhou Yanzhi.

Before our wedding invitations could even be written, I was pinned down onto the Core-extraction Platform.

When the tip of Ning Changye’s sword pierced my chest, he suddenly coughed up blood before I did.

Only then did the entire sect see his Life Thread wrapped around my wrist.

But what they didn’t know was that if I failed to survive the next seven days, the Demon Abyss would tear open-and the person who truly deserved to die was still standing on the high platform, watching me with a smile.

In the second year of the famine, just before my father was about to sell me at the human market, my mother secretly ran back to her maiden home.

The night she returned, she was covered in blood.

There was a hole in her belly, and one of her legs was gone.

She handed my father the tripod cauldron she had carried on her back.

“Take it. With this, you won’t go hungry. Don’t sell Ah Yu.”

The tripod cauldron was not very large, but it was packed full inside.

With one tug, a snow-white leg came out.

If you threw in a piece of cloth, an identical piece of cloth would come out.

If you threw in a chicken, another chicken would come out too.

My father was so overjoyed he nearly went mad.

He never noticed that, before my mother breathed her last, she said one final sentence to me.

Chen Mu hated me.

Because I bullied and framed his precious childhood sweetheart.

Again and again, he saw through my schemes with cold eyes and watched me reap what I had sown.

“Bad seed,” he called me.

But when I kissed him in the dark, he panicked.

“Brother Chen Mu, shouldn’t a bad girl deserve a little punishment?”

I was the daughter of a noble house, personally chosen by the emperor to enter the palace. With a single imperial edict, I was made Noble Consort. Everyone envied my good fortune, never knowing that within a gilded cage, even a sparrow cannot fly free. On the day I entered the palace, the matron attending my bath told me: “His Majesty is gentle and kind. Your Grace, do not be afraid.” But in this fathomless palace, the very earth was piled with bones. Every terror within these walls had been wrought by his own hand.

The Supreme God cultivated the Path of Ruthlessness. He was without desire or longing, stern and impartial.

To prove that she held a place in the Supreme God’s heart, the Fairy Maiden deliberately slaughtered Meng Family Village.

Kneeling on the ground, she wept like a rain-drenched blossom. “Your disciple has committed a grave sin. Master, please punish me. Grind my bones to dust and scatter my ashes.”

The Supreme God stared blankly at that beautiful face. In the end, he could not bring himself to do it.

He summoned the Nine Nether Yin Fire to burn the village and destroy all evidence, then ordered his disciple to return and copy scriptures in repentance.

I crawled out from a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, selling my soul to the Evil Demon for one thing alone: revenge.

The Evil Demon’s voice was beguiling. “What do you want?”

I looked back at the roaring flames behind me. “I heard that a thousand years ago, the Supreme God killed his wife to prove his Dao. Give me a face identical to his dead wife’s.”

On the night I married Lu Boya, my buddies warned me, “Professor Lu is a refined scholar with a delicate constitution. You’d better be gentle with him!”

I gave them a ferocious grin. “Gentle? Not happening. This lady has plenty of strength-and plenty of tricks!”

The next day, my voice was hoarse and my eyes were swollen as I shouted at Lu Boya, who stood there in a crisp suit and gold-rimmed glasses.

“Liar!”

Refined scholar? Delicate constitution? All lies!

After announcing his marriage at a concert, the top-tier singer suddenly broke down in tears.

It was because he had just received news of my death.

Zhou Yan. We met at six and said our goodbyes at twenty-four.

I never had the courage to tell you that I truly, deeply loved you.

Chapter 0

Pei Qian forgot me. All because, on the eve of our wedding, he got drunk, took a fall, and forgot he was supposed to take a bride. Was I to believe that, or not?

Naturally, I believed it with the utmost gratitude. Since he had forgotten me, my marriage to him could be written off in one stroke.

I packed up my money and dowry. Boling was no longer an option, so for the time being, I settled down in Hedong.

If my father had not died so early, I feared I never would have come anywhere near the gates of the Pei Family.

My father died after taking elixirs and running naked through the streets. Everyone praised him for being romantic and unrestrained-a true eminent gentleman!

He had only been a concubine-born son of a collateral branch of the Cui Clan, yet within a few days of his death, he had somehow become the pride of the Cui Clan.

For a time, the worth of my sisters and me rose with the tide. The great aristocratic families all came asking for our hands. Mother even forgot to fake her tears. Every day, she beamed with joy as she received one guest and sent off another.

This world had gone mad, and so had the people in it.

After much careful selection, Mother chose Pei Qian, the Second Young Master of the Pei Clan of Hedong, for me.

Everyone said he was elegant, graceful, wild, and unrestrained-the foremost romantic figure of Great Wei.

At that, I thought of my father, sprinting along with all that pale flesh jiggling in the wind.

I despised these so-called eminent gentlemen from the bottom of my heart.

As it turned out, he would rather change his name and identity than marry me. Excellent. That suited me perfectly.

Chapter 0

I unexpectedly entered Wonderland.

But what awaited me was a rules-horror nightmare.

Players who violate the rules will become the red paint used to color the white roses.

Rule 2: Both cookies and potions are poisonous. Please consume with caution.

Rule 3: The hat is the Mad Hatter’s most precious possession. Do not touch it lightly.

Rule 6: Mr. White Rabbit’s pocket watch is faster than the actual time.

Rule 10: Under no circumstances should others be allowed to see your rules.

Welcome to Alice’s Nightmare.

Good luck, Player Tong Yu.

I stared at the playing card that had appeared in my hand at some unknown moment, printed with these bizarre rules, and fell into deep thought.

Five minutes ago, I was still sitting in a theater seat, quietly waiting for the post-credits scene of the movie Alice in Wonderland.

I had seen this animation when I was a child. While shopping at the mall, I had unexpectedly won a free movie ticket, so I stopped by to revisit the classic.

After the film ended, I intended to leave directly like most of the audience, but the theater staff blocked the exit and suggested we stay to watch the surprise post-credits scene before leaving.

Was my memory failing me? In my impression, there were no post-credits scenes at the end of this film.

It wasn’t until the credits finished rolling that the big screen suddenly went blank, and all the lights in the theater extinguished simultaneously.

The next second, a blood-covered, red-eyed rabbit suddenly appeared on the screen.

Accompanied by the screams of the audience, a terrifying giant rabbit crawled out from the two-dimensional screen, opened its bloody maw, and swallowed everyone whole.

When I opened my eyes again, I had arrived in this strange world along with the other audience members.

A mysterious forest and a White Rabbit in formal wear looked almost identical to the scenes from the film.

It had been exactly one week since the last time I entered a bizarre and absurd fairy tale world.

I had thought it was just a premonitory dream.

But the card in my hand with the eerie rules seemed to tell me that this was likely only the beginning.

Standing in the center of the crowd, Mr. White Rabbit glanced at the pocket watch on his chest, cleared his throat, and said:

“Everyone, welcome to the first stage of Alice’s Nightmare Trial: Broken Pocket Watch.”

As soon as the White Rabbit finished speaking, an identical pocket watch suddenly appeared in everyone’s hands.

“Adjust the time to the correct position and press the button on top of the pocket watch to submit your answer.”

I leaned in and saw the time on the pocket watch on his chest.

It displayed a fixed moment that never advanced.

20:27.

I lowered my head and re-examined the rules.

The only useful information was Rule 6: Mr. White Rabbit’s pocket watch is faster than the actual time.

But how could I know exactly how much faster it was?

There are thirteen ranks in a deck of cards, but I had only received four scattered cards.

The other half of the clues for this puzzle should be on the other cards I hadn’t received.

This was a game that required cooperation.

Just as I was planning to look for teammates among the people around me, the man standing in front of me suddenly exploded into a blur of flesh and blood.

Droplets of blood splashed onto my card.

At the same time, explosions began to occur one after another throughout the crowd.

The White Rabbit held a paint bucket, collecting plasma while saying, “A reminder to everyone: once an answer is submitted, it cannot be changed. Please cherish your only chance.”

When I was thirteen, I traded myself for a bowl of chicken soup. From that moment on, I knew I was born for this life. I used it to trade for one head after another.

The neighbor’s kid jumped off the building after being bullied.

She landed directly on my brand-new car, her head lolling, hanging off the windshield.

She died, and her mother lost her mind.

When the neighbors held the funeral, several of the bullies actually showed up at the scene.

They mocked the mother relentlessly: “Your family line is completely dead now. You don’t even have a single relative left, do you?”

They were making too much noise.

I slowly pushed open my door to teach them a lesson: “A near neighbor is better than a distant relative.”

Besides, her neighbor might just be insane.

I’m an influencer who specializes in adventure content.

For the sake of the show, I bought a cabinet that had once been used to hide a corpse.

Supposedly, the cabinet was cursed.

Anyone who owned it would die an unnatural death within ten days.

I’ve always been stubborn, and luck has always been on my side.

I absolutely didn’t believe it.

The night I had the cabinet moved into my home, I had a dream.

A girl covered in blood crawled out of the cabinet.

She beckoned to me, then glanced at the clock on the wall and used her fingernail to carve a “9” into the cabinet. …

The woman who lived across from us was beautiful, with a captivating, mature allure.

Every man in the building was bewitched by her. Only my husband scoffed.

But when the elevator suddenly plunged,

he completely forgot about me and our daughter. He turned around and pulled her tightly into his arms.

So tightly it was as if he wanted to press her into his own body.

The Chang’e in Yu Hebai’s painting came to life.

She descended gracefully into the mortal world, and Yu Hebai worshipped her as a Goddess.

So completely that he forgot all about his engagement to me.

Clutching the marriage contract, I went to the Yu family estate to demand an explanation from Yu Hebai.

But the moment I stepped through the gates of the Yu family courtyard, I couldn’t help shaking my head.

My first thought was: What kind of Chang’e is this supposed to be?

My second thought was: She was nowhere near the woman who had stayed at my house last night.

The moment I received my fiancé’s letter breaking off our engagement, I headed straight for Cangzhou.

I was planning to demand a few dozen taels of silver as compensation for my wasted youth.

What I hadn’t expected was that he had fallen from being a prince’s estate adviser to a criminal slave.

He knelt on the ground, covered in blood and filth, looking so pitiful that anyone could do whatever they wanted with him.

“Are you buying or not? If you’re not, move to the back!”

The people there to buy slaves shoved me behind them.

I thought to myself in secret,

This isn’t me refusing to save him, okay? Other people pushed me out!

At once, I felt perfectly justified in turning to leave.

The seller was still urging the crowd, “Hurry it up! This is the last day! Anyone who doesn’t sell today gets dragged to the market and beheaded tomorrow!”

My steps paused slightly, and I tightened my grip on the purse hidden in my sleeve.

Just then, I heard a hoarse voice shout,

“My fiancée is here to buy me! The one with the shabby bamboo hat!”

This was the seventeenth time I’d run into my roommate Cheng Yuming’s girlfriend on my way downstairs.

As was her habit, she pulled a plump orange from her bag and offered it to me, her eyes curving into a gentle, sweet smile.

I didn’t take it. I simply called her name. “Jiang Tingyu.”

“Yes?”

“Try a different fruit,” I said, my voice flat. “Oranges cause too much internal heat.”

During my first year of graduate school, I hailed a ride and ended up in a Maybach.

That was when I met a man.

And from that moment on, the trajectory of my life was changed forever.

Three months after I moved into Old River Bend, the old lady next door died. While I was helping clear out her belongings, I found a diary.

The first page read: “My daughter died three years ago. The person living next door to me is a ghost.”

But I knew there was something wrong with her daughter from the very first day, because I’m a ghost, too.

The summer I turned ten, my younger sister went missing.

She vanished on her way to deliver lunch to our parents.

There were no security cameras, and no one had seen her.

Because I was the one who was supposed to have gone, my mother never spoke another word to me again.

Fifteen years later, I became a police officer. I retraced the path my sister took that day, over and over again.

The past began to resurface in my mind, piece by piece.

Slowly, I pieced together a heartbreaking truth.